


i'm a ghost but i don't live in winter

by cassiecasyl



Series: The Prompt Jar [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes-centric, Can be seen as platonic, Canon Related, Canon Universe, Depression, Dissociation, Gen, Ghosts, I'm Bad At Summaries, Late at Night, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Past Brainwashing, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, how do i summarize this, natasha is mentioned - Freeform, omg they are roommates, seriously, they just happen to sleep in the same bed so..., this wasn't meant as stucky i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:41:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24388354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassiecasyl/pseuds/cassiecasyl
Summary: At night, Bucky is lost in this mind.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: The Prompt Jar [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789972
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	i'm a ghost but i don't live in winter

Sometimes, it all felt so unreal. Steve snoring softly next to him, the warm darkness surrounding them, the peace he hadn’t felt in years. It was all displaced yet bright and clear before his eyes. A dissonance within the home he’d found here, but he could never quite figure out where within the melody it was. 

Steve moved slightly and his arm bumped against Buck, sending a shiver of fear through the soldier. For a moment, all his senses blared in red alarm, and his muscles tensed in preparation for a fight. Bucky closed his eyes for a split second to draw in a deep breath, before scanning the empty room. The shadows in the corners wanted to play with him, and the curtains asked for a dance in the wind that swept in through the tilted window. He ignored their pleading arms and inaudible calls, something he could identify as imaginary. 

Bucky sighed and shifted slightly. There was nothing here to harm them, yet he still couldn’t shake the fear. It was everywhere, in the way Stark would glare at him, in the way the others sometimes tensed up around him, in the way Steve would look at him as if he couldn’t believe he was really here. Maybe he wasn’t, he thought then. The Bucky he knew had died long ago, bleeding out in the snow after falling off a train. The Bucky that came back was a ghost story, a man as harsh and unforgiving as the winter, killing whoever dared to gift their fate to his cold claws. 

“That wasn’t you. It’s not your fault,” Steve would whisper to him now, his words shooing the darkness away, but these thoughts were annoying geese. 

“We both got red in our ledger, and we’d like to wipe it out,” Nat would comfort him in her own way, “it is hard, but we can try every day.” 

This felt more sincere somehow. To Steve, he was a ghost, his resurrected childhood buddy, and he was forever grateful for that. Natasha though understood what he had gone through, having lived through it herself to a degree. Sometimes, it was just impossible to forgive himself for everything he’d done while being Hydra’s assassin, especially when a new memory surfaced from the depths of his shredded mind. He knew they were more they took from him. On some days, he was grateful for that. On other days, he wept for all the victims he couldn’t remember. 

“Buck?” Steve groggily asked, his eyes barely staying awake, “what’re you doing up?” 

“Couldn’t sleep,” he admitted after coming up short for better responses. 

Steve sat up at that, his eyes now filled with an edge of alarm and worry, leaning in carefully to wrap his friend in a hug. “Nightmare?” His fingers brushed away the bleak breeze Buck’s mind had brought, and the soldier smiled at Steve. It was an expression on the thin line between being true and fake though, with the indecisiveness of never leaving that line, and Bucky hoped his friend couldn’t tell. He felt the warmth through a veil, removed somehow from his feelings, yet able to observe and act accordingly. _Like a ghost_ , he realized. 

“No,” Bucky answered truthfully, as there had been no real reason to his early waking. 

_He was a ghost, a mere story, lost in the winter and long gone..._

“Then why are you up?” Steve insisted, drawing a low chuckle from Buck. He reached over to ruffle Steve’s bed hair, but his shoulder ached in a ghostly pain as he realized there was no arm there. It was a familiar pang echoing through him, not missed by Steve, though Bucky quickly stopped his eyes from glossing over. Now was not the time to space out into the depths of his mind. 

“Because I woke up,” he deadpanned before turning slightly to comb his right hand through Steve’s hair. It did significantly nothing to soothe Steve’s concern, but it did enough to shoo him away from the topic. 

“Come back to sleep,” Steve now begged, “it’s still dark outside.” His long arms tried to pull him back into the warmth, his hands burning against Bucky’s cold skin. It was a glowing stick melting the snow, and Buck was ready to fall into the sun he promised. It’d been always like this, he remembered, Steve was the ray of sunshine and Buck the cold watchdog. Or was it? Long-forgotten jokes lay on his tongue, but the frost choked them on his vocal cords. 

A shadow stuck its tongue out in the corner of his eye, and Bucky spun around in a quick motion. There wasn’t anything there, of course, just a play on his heightened senses. 

“You don’t need to watch over me anymore, remember?” Steve chuckled behind him, still tugging at his arms. _He didn’t need him_. The thought swirled through his head, followed closely by similar ones. “The war is over. We’re safe here.” 

Then why didn’t he feel safe? Why did everything feel detached, removed like his left arm, leaving only a ghostly sense of pain? He settled his upper body down next to Steve, who grunted satisfied. For a moment, they lay in the wet cold mud of a battlefield somewhere in Germany, the sounds of gunshots and screams in the distance slowly coming closer. It had rained the night before, but the cold fall air was nowhere as freezing as the winter that later claimed his body. 

He breathed heavily as Steve’s warm arms wrapped around him and brought him back to reality. It was warm here, but Bucky still wasn’t sure whether he belonged. He was an impostor of Captain America’s childhood friend, a ghost of war. It was carved into his bones, random Russian words and the destruction they meant. 

He would never understand the faith Steve had in him. This stupid faith that nearly got him killed, the same one that broke through his brainwashing. Of course Steve had forgiven him. It hadn’t mattered what he did. Steve always believed in the good in men, and above all, in the good in those he chose. And destiny had decided over and over again for Bucky to be this person, it seemed. What was he to do with that? It was a different Bucky Steve lost and missed, who was he to fill that hole? How was he worth all this?

The broken anger in Stark’s eyes after he watched the footage still haunted him. The screams and cries of countless victims still filled his dreams. The way his body suddenly switched into the ways of a killer horrified him to death. 

The Winter Soldier was still alive underneath all the healing he was granted here. He lurked in the shadows in a forgotten alley in his mind, watching his every step and movement. He was a thread, and so was Bucky. 

He was a ghost story, the Winter Soldier a whispered legend to instill fear in whoever dared to cross his way. Maybe he’d died to be reborn, but sometimes Bucky could barely grasp life as it was. He was out of his time, and though the Soldier had learned about new technology, it still felt alien to him even when his fingers knowingly used it. Some things only his muscles remembered and some things seemed too easy to have learned for the first time. It scared him, all the things his own mind kept hidden from him. It was a lifetime lost, decades thrown into the abyss of oblivion. Now here he was, in a body far too young to have withstood a century, and he struggled to remember how he even got here. It was unreal, though he had learned to recognize reality. 

Steve fastened his hold around his torso, embracing him in the warmth and keeping him in the here and now. He’d found a home here.

Bucky was a ghost of himself and at a loss of memories, but Steve was breathing steadily next to him and he somehow knew it wasn’t a dream. His warmth let the snow in his mind melt, and even when he still felt like a ghost at times, as long as he stayed here, he knew didn’t have to live in winter. 


End file.
